A Swedish court has set the date for the Assange “rape case” hearing for July 16. The announcement comes as Twitter is bombarded with happy birthday wishes to the WikiLeaks founder, who turned 43 on Thursday, his second year at the Ecuadorean embassy.

The public hearing at
Stockholm district court will be the first legal move in the case
since the WikiLeaks founder requested asylum in the
South-American country’s embassy in 2012.

However, it is more than likely that in two weeks from now the
hearing will kick off without the defendant.

Julian Assange, now 43, is still at the Ecuadorean embassy in the
UK capital, and showing no signs of getting ready to travel to
Stockholm. Should he leave the embassy – even to greet his fans
who came to the embassy with happy birthday banners – the
whistleblower will be arrested and extradited to Sweden.

Since Swedish prosecutors do not consider the possibility of
questioning the WikiLeaks founder in London, Stockholm district
court extended Assange’s invitation to come to Sweden for the
hearing.

The invitation for Assange was sent to an "address unknown", the
Guardian reported. There are valid reasons, the court said, why
he may not attend the hearing, like public transport, sudden
illness, or unforeseen circumstances.

If Assange has no good reason not to attend, he was advised to
arrive on time and "clear your pockets of metal objects and put
them in the plastic bins provided", the newspaper cited the
court’s letter to the whistleblower.

His legal team argued that restrictions of "fundamental freedoms"
since the allegations were made in 2010 are unreasonable and
disproportionate, but the prosecutor disagreed saying that
confinement in the embassy was self-imposed and "cannot be
equated with detention", The Guardian reports.

"In our opinion, when assessing proportionality, only the time
[detained] for questioning in the English courts should be taken
into account," the Guardian cited prosecutors Marianne Ny and
Ingred Isgren. They pointed out that Assange was arrested for
just 10 days in December 2010.

"There is still probable cause to believe that Julian Assange
is guilty of the offences that he was arrested for, and the basis
for his detention, risk of flight, is undiminished," they
also said.

Assange has been wanted in Sweden for questioning over
allegations of the rape and sexual assault of two women, charges
he denies. Swedish authorities issued a warrant for Assange’s
extradition back in 2012, forcing the WikiLeaks founder to seek
asylum in Ecuador’s London Embassy. The whistleblower fears that
once in Sweden he will be extradited to the US, where he is
wanted on charges of espionage due to his role in exposing
American state secrets and may face the death sentence.